What is Mello-Roos, and how do I find out if a house has it?

A Mello-Roos tax is not part of your Proposition 13 assessment and it is not a homeowners association fee. It is a special tax levied by a Community Facilities District, created under the Mello-Roos Community Facilities Act of 1982 at Government Code section 53311 and following. Districts are formed to pay for the infrastructure a new development needs — schools, roads, parks, sewers — and sometimes for the ongoing services those developments require.

It is collected on your property tax bill, and Government Code 53340 makes it behave exactly like ordinary property tax in the ways that matter: same penalties, same lien priority, same consequences for not paying.

How to check before you make an offer

What the seller has to tell you

Civil Code section 1102.6b requires a seller to make a good-faith effort to obtain a Notice of Special Tax from the levying agency and give it to you. That notice must state the name of the district, the annual tax for the current year, the maximum tax that may ever be levied, the percentage by which that maximum can rise each year, and the date until the tax may be levied.

Two limits are worth knowing. The seller has no duty to discover districts they genuinely do not know about. And once a compliant notice has been delivered, neither the seller nor their agent is required to tell you anything further about it. The notice is the floor, not the ceiling — read it, then call the agency yourself.

Does it ever end?

This is the most misunderstood part, and the answer depends on what the district was formed to do.

Government Code 53321(d) requires that for residential parcels the maximum special tax be stated as a dollar amount, that the resolution specify a tax year after which no further tax is levied, and that the maximum rise by no more than 2 percent a year. The City of San Diego states its own districts terminate once the bonds are repaid, not more than 30 years after issuance — that is City policy for City districts, not a statewide cap.

Maintenance districts are the exception, and San Diego County's active-district list contains them by name — Sweetwater Place Maintenance, Park Circle Maintenance, Piper Otay Maintenance. Nothing forces those to stop.

A real example

The City of San Diego's administration report for Santaluz CFD No. 2, Improvement Area 1 for 2025-26 shows what a district actually looks like on paper: an annual special tax per developed home ranging from $1,008.36 for houses under 1,750 square feet to $5,104.90 for custom lots, levied for the year at about 47 percent of the maximum, across 988 taxable parcels, with a final bond payment date of 1 September 2030.

Where it is common

The heaviest concentration in the county is in Chula Vista and Otay Ranch, with roughly thirty districts. Poway Unified School District administers more than thirty of its own, so homes across its boundary — including newer North County communities — commonly carry a school CFD. The City of San Diego's own districts include Santaluz, Black Mountain Ranch Villages and Liberty Station. The County Auditor publishes the full active list each year.